Plan C Also Failed In Plugging Reactor 2 Trench…Now What?

But first, recall that Plan A was to install freezing pipes at the head of the trench leading from Reactor 2 turbine building to create an ice plug so that the extremely contaminated water that had been sitting in the trench since the very beginning of the nuclear accident could be pumped out. TEPCO started the work in April this year.

That failed. The ice plug didn’t quite form.

Then recall that Plan B was to dump tons (literally) of ice and dry ice in the trench near the freezing pipes to lower the temperature of the water around the freezing pipes so that the ice plug would finally form. Workers dumped ice all day and all night, in the high ambient radiation right at the trench. That was in hot August. Try to freeze the trench with ice in hot August.

That also failed. Dry ice clogged the pipe, and the ice plug didn’t quite form, and TEPCO admitted there was water still coming into the trench from the turbine building. The water sitting in the turbine building comes from the reactor building after it cools the molten core somewhere in the building, and it is warm.

What was Plan C? It was to fill the gap between the incomplete ice plug and the turbine building wall with fillers. TEPCO chose the combination of grout and concrete. A plug of ice, grout and concrete was formed. Sort of.

TEPCO finally admitted on November 17 that it was a failure after pumping out some 200 tonnes of this highly contaminated water on November 17 and seeing that the water level in the trench didn’t go down as much as they had calculated. The water was still coming in from the turbine building, and the groundwater was probably seeping in.

But not to worry. TEPCO has Plan D, and it has been already approved by Nuclear Regulation Authority.

So what is Plan D? To fill the trench with cement while pumping out the water that gets displaced (in theory) by the cement.

An effort to stop contaminated water from flowing into a trench at the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant failed to completely halt the flow, announced Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO), the plant’s operator, on Nov. 17.

A TEPCO representative said, “We believe we have not completely stopped the water. Groundwater may also be entering the trench. We will closely analyze the changes in water level in the trench.”

TEPCO says that when around 200 tons of contaminated water was removed from the trench, the water level in the trench should have fallen by around 80 centimeters if the point of leakage between the plant’s No. 2 reactor turbine building and the trench had been fully sealed. However, the water level only fell by 21 centimeters, so TEPCO determined that the leak must be continuing.

…While the water remains in the trench, TEPCO cannot create a planned underground wall of frozen soil around the No. 1 through 4 reactor buildings to stop water leakages.

(TEPCO) will propose (to Nuclear Regulation Authority) a new method of plugging the trench by pouring in the special cement that spread thin and wide in the water while removing the contaminated water in the trench gradually.

Special cement?

TEPCO says in the document (page 9) they submitted to NRA that it will be a mixture of cement, fly ash and underwater-inseparable admixtures (セメント、フライアッシュおよび水中不分離混和剤などの配合調整). They will use the tremie concrete placement method.

(Do you want to bet whether that is going to fail?)

The NRA meeting on November 21, 2014 was funny without participants intending to be funny, from what I read in the tweets by people watching the meeting.

At one point, Commissioner Fuketa exasperatedly asked TEPCO representatives, “So what was the point of trying to freeze the water? Was freezing even necessary at all?”

The answer was no. TEPCO’s Shirai admitted (according to the tweet by @jaikoman on 11/21/2014) that there was a talk inside TEPCO that the ice plug was not necessary.

So why did they do it, and why did NRA approve it?

No one knows and no one is held accountable, while workers had to set up freezing pipes, then to pour ice, dry ice, grout, concrete, and to pump this highly contaminated water over the past 8 months in high radiation exposure. TEPCO hasn’t disclosed the radiation exposure for the workers.

12 comments

This will continue to spoil the enviroment and the people who live on earth for hundreds of thousands of years.
Those who know something about this have known all along that it will forever poisin the earth but they continue to lie to us and themselves and seek to profit.
In short, profits have blinded them to the truth and we must remove them from the decision making process.

Excerpt – At Fukushima the powers-that-be are using low paid workers as debt-slave/cannon-fodder/lab-rats while pilfering the public purse, and if some worthwhile research comes of it, let alone the actual completion of the task, all the better. Forty years is a nice, round number and those that concocted it will no longer be around to take responsibility for the malfeasance if things turn out differently.

Wilcox goes on to elaborate on: 1 – Japan’s Zombie Politics, 2 – Another Fine Mess, Tepco’s Underground Bypass System Sham, 3 – Tepco’s Unforgivable Lack Of Methodological Credibility, 4 – The Old “They Knew It Wouldn’t Work” Strategy, 5 – Vice As Nice, Another Example of the Way in which Alternative Energy is Being Suppressed by the Nuclear Cartel and the Abe Administration.

It is a terrible thing that needs to be fixed; but I will guess that most of the people who are going on about this problem, do not know what it is to be staring at a problem and have no solution to it. How many of the commenters on this blog, are politically active? It is all well and good to open your mouth when the problem becomes fully developed. How many of these people are active before the waste, hits the air transfer propeller?

Oh David I wish you were right but it’s far worse. The plutonium I am told will still be hot when our sun becomes a red giant – basically forever. Is it a wonder that they are doing their level best and doing a good job of keeping this a secret. Imagine the panic if the people of the world found out they are being slowly poisoned. People with no hope are very, very dangerous!!!!

I have to go back to my original exasperated outcry when this first occured, Who thought it was safe to build a nuclear plant on an island in the first place? It just seems to me that an island is a unstable environment for something that needs utmost stability. I think the idiots in charge who thought this was a great idea should fall on some swords if they haven’t already.

Quote 1 “July 26, 2023 – The released images of Reactor 3 ‘steaming.’ Tepco said they would never do that again because it struck fear in the Japanese people and the world.”

Quote 2 “January 1, 2014 – Again the Fukushima live camera caught steam coming out of Reactor 3. Reactor 3 is steaming out of control, burning its way into the ground, releasing radioactive isotopes that are unnatural and toxic.”

Excerpt – In response to questions from The Asahi Shimbun, Baverstock said a report released in April by the U.N. Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) was “not qualified to be called ‘scientific’” because it lacked transparency and independent verification. He added that the committee should be disbanded.

The U.N. report said any increase in overall cancer rates among residents of Fukushima Prefecture due to fallout from the accident was unlikely.

Excerpt – He also questioned UNSCEAR’s neutrality, given that members are nominated by nations that have a vested interest in nuclear power. He noted that such nations provide funds to the committee.

pride and money mean more than life itself to the pro nuclear power folks,

Let us not forget that Japan is not just any island, but a volcanic, siesmic and geologically unstable one. Shame on the U.S. for pushing nuclear energy on a country that knew first hand the horror of nucelar bombing. Now they people are again being manipulated into the re-opening of many of its aging plants.

What if we put some sulfuric acid into the feed water, and then took it off the boiler unit to a collection point where it could be reclaimed, thereby increasing the rate at which the rods decay, until the uranium is all recovered, and the reactor is safe? Is this plausible? I know that this is how uranium is mined, could we simply mine it out of the reactor?

The question comes to mind what good is reducing carbon in the atmosphere by using nuclear power compared to nuclear contamination in the environment when things go badly at one of these plants? Which is worse? Proponents in favor of nuclear power always say, “Nuclear Power Plants can be operated safely.” I agree this is the case while they are operating normally. The problem comes in and safety goes out the window when something goes very wrong. When that happens there is no force on earth that can make a damaged plant operate safely. The only safe place for spent nuclear waste is to send it to the Sun, Mercury, or Venus in small payloads via rockets. Any nuclear scientist worth his salt knows Thorium is the only form of large-scale nuclear power worth pursuing. Now who wants to step up and develop this technology?